By KRYSTEL ROLLE,Guardian Staff Reporter,krystel@nasguard.com

Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham yesterday said he expects there to be further downsizing in the hotel industry in the coming months, and also stuck to his earlier forecast that the unemployment rate will rise to the lower double digits.

Ingraham was responding to news that 21 people were laid off from Comfort Suites on Paradise Island yesterday.

In recent months, more than 1,200 hotel workers have been laid off, driving the unemployment rate — which according to the latest statistics compiled in May 2008 stood at 8.7 percent — even higher.

"I expect that the downsizing in the hotel sector has not been complete," Ingraham said. "If you go back to the speech I gave to the nation, I forecasted that I expected unemployment to rise to the lower double digit levels, so that will not be surprising for me."

The prime minister spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the 7th Annual Caribbean MBA Conference at the Atlantis Resort.

In his address to the nation last November, he said unemployment is now a most serious concern. Since then, reports relating to the performance of the tourism industry have continued to be dismal.

For instance, the Central Bank said in an economic report released Friday that while cumulative data for the first nine months of last year indicated a 5.8 percent improvement in hotel room revenues, New Providence properties experienced a 36.9 percent reduction in September revenues. In Grand Bahama, where September losses were estimated at 37.1 percent, room revenues declined on a year-to-year basis by 18.7 percent, the report said.

It added that Family Island surveyed properties experienced a nearly 50 percent fall in revenue during September and 6.8 percent reduction for the first nine months of 2008.

Yesterday, Ingraham pointed to December occupancy rates, which at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island were "excellent".

"I might say this, that a number of people who were laid off here at Atlantis were able to come back to work over the Christmas holiday. [Atlantis] had excellent occupancy and occupancy is going to be reasonably good at least for the first 10 days or so for this month," he said.

"Based upon the events of November and October it may or may not pan out to be as bad as we had feared but it's too early to make any definitive statement on it."

About 800 employees were laid off from the Atlantis Resort about two months ago.

Leading international credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P), in its recent report on The Bahamas, noted that the effects of the slowdown of the U.S. economy are being felt across all sectors of the Bahamian economy, especially tourism, construction and retail.

"The Bahamas' tourism outlook for 2009 is bleak," S&P added.

The report also projected that with many contractors and tourism workers losing their jobs, the unemployment rate is rising rapidly and could reach 13 percent in 2009.